Soundtrack of Our Lives
by ColorOfAngels
Summary: 10 independent Steve x Darcy minifics written for the Shuffle Challenge on tumblr, cleaned up for your viewing pleasure
1. Sunday Morning - Maroon 5

Shuffle Challenge Rules  
a fandom/couple/crossover you like.  
on your music player and put it on random (aka: shuffle).  
a drabble related to each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish the drabble; you start when the song starts, and stop when it ends.  
lingering afterwards. No cheating.  
10 of these and post them.

Sorry there's been no new V is for Victory the past couple weeks but absolutely insane working hours plus the head cold from hell that I've been battling for three weeks now hasn't been conducive to getting any writing done... So I figured I would throw these up for those of you who didn't catch them on my tumblr last week, in the mean time :)

* * *

Sunday morning rain is falling  
Steal some covers share some skin  
Clouds are shrouding us in moments unforgettable  
You twist to fit the mold that I am in  
But things just get so crazy living life gets hard to do  
And I would gladly hit the road get up and go if I knew  
That someday it would bring me back to you  
That someday it would bring me back to you

The first time Darcy had informed him that he was absolutely not allowed to get out of bed before 11 am on Sunday mornings, that is was a _Rule_, capital R and italics implied, Steve wasn't sure what to make of it. There had never been a time in his life where such acts of slothfulness would not have been considered sinful, let alone be demanded of him. He actually thought she was kidding, or at the very least exaggerating, but it turned out that Sunday morning laze-abouts, as she called them, were strictly enforced in the Lewis household. Saving the world was the only accepted excuse and even that was tenuous justification for missing Sunday morning sleep in.

It only took a few weeks, however, before Sunday officially became his favorite day of the week. He soon discovered that she didn't mean they had to actually sleep until 11, although sometimes they did, recharging after an action packed week. Sometimes they just hung out in bed, silently eating sugary cereals out of the box and watching cartoons Darcy saved to the DVR. Sometimes they snuggled together, legs entwined beneath the sheets, talking softly about what ever crossed their minds. And some mornings, like today, they made sleepy, lazy, sloppy, love to the soundtrack of the late summer New York thunderstorm raging outside the open window.


	2. Setting Up Sunday – Meg and Dia

Setting up Sunday  
Watching the winter grow so, oh, no  
We're making excuses  
For insecurities  
It's not about me  
Oh, it's never about me

Steve would never forget the first time he saw her. It had been snowing all morning when she came bursting into Stark Tower all red cheeked and bright eyes, snowflakes still clinging to the tips of her eyelashes left over from her walk from the train. There was an immediate attraction before he even knew who she was and how she was connected to their group. But it was the moment that she began to speak, playfully berating Tony for having JARVIS hack into her school's network and cancelling the afternoon history class that she actually liked instead of her morning analytic geometry class, so that she would be available to him for the rest of the day, that he knew was done for. That the visceral want deep in his belly would be a constant companion whenever they were in the same room.

She was young, and bright, and free and the very embodiment of everything a young woman could become at the dawn of the twenty first century. But he would never tell her that, not how much he admired her light and vitality. No, he would only watch from afar as they skirted the edges of each others social circle. He had nothing to offer her, he was old fashioned, cynical about what the world had become, he was a relic from another time. She was better off without him regardless of how lost and alone he felt, and how a single smile from her could brighten his whole day. She was better off if he kept his distance, he could only bring her down. It wasn't about him.


	3. Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo – Cinderella

Salagadoola mechicka boola bibbidi-bobbidi-boo  
Put 'em together and what have you got  
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo  
Salagadoola mechicka boola bibbidi-bobbidi-boo  
It'll do magic believe it or not  
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo

They say that no matter how long you're in a relationship with someone, you don't really know a person fully until you live with them. That all their little quirks (like always going to bed with socks, but kicking them off half way through the night) and habits (like always forgetting to put the cap back on the toothpaste) that they wouldn't normally share, unconsciously or not, can't be hidden from someone you cohabitate with. For example, Steve never knew that Darcy liked to sing while she while she cleaned around the apartment, Disney songs no less. She had a mix on her iPod of music from every movie Disney had released since he was a kid that she would put on shuffle and blast while she cleaned.

And as Steve watched her dance around the apartment in a pair of his boxer shorts and a Hulk tank top, singing along with Cinderella's fairy god mother, knowing every single word by heart, he couldn't wait to see what else he had yet learn about his girlfriend.


	4. When You Were Young – The Killers

You sit there in your heartache  
Waiting on some beautiful boy to  
To save you from your old ways  
You play forgiveness  
Watch it now  
Here he comes

He doesn't look a thing like Jesus  
But he talks like a gentleman  
Like you imagined  
When you were young

Darcy had long since given up on the idea of the whole Disney Prince thing. In fact she was only seven when she told her mother that Ariel was an idiot because she gave up her friends, her family, and her voice for some guy that she didn't even know if he was nice. So no, she never expected her prince charming to come sweep her off her feet, those things just didn't actually happen in real life. Well except to Jane, but that was just the exception that proved the rule.

And really that suited Darcy just fine. She liked skinny boys, with dark hair, a permanent five o clock shadow, wearing a pair of worn out chucks that they'd had since high school. She dated guys who could debate the merits of punk rock versus post-punk and who always knew where the best underground bands were playing on any given Saturday night.

So yeah, Disney Princes were not her style, at least that's what she thought until she was kidnapped by Loki one late summer night. And so there she was tied to a chair all damsely and distressed, but mostly just annoyed, when he came riding to her rescue. Not on a horse, but in a quinjet and wrapped in the American flag instead of a crown. But when he lifted her blindfold and smiled at her with the traditional princely shining blonde hair and chiseled jaw, Darcy figured she might have to revise her opinions on Disney Princes.


	5. Incomplete and Insecure – Avett Brothers

I haven't finished a thing since I started my life  
I don't feel much like starting now  
Walking down lonely has worked like a charm  
I'm the only one I have to let down

Darcy wasn't good with follow through. There was a reason she changed her major four times in her six year college career. She only ended up graduating with a degree in Poly-Sci because her parents threatened to stop paying her tuition and the jumble of classes from her previous majors actually managed to fulfill the requirement with the exception of six units of a physical science.

Everyone always took her bravado for confidence, but that was actually the furthest thing from the truth. There was nothing that terrified Darcy more than failure. In her opinion it was much better to make the choice to quit, to depart of her own volition before things inevitably went south (as things in her experience always seemed to do) and she was forced to leave. And that was why when she was in the closet rummaging through the pockets of the suit that Steve had worn at the last function they had attended, looking for her favorite lip gloss that she had asked him to hold for her, and found the a small velvet box that contained a diamond ring in the inner pocket of his jacket instead, she was already packing her bags.


	6. Captains and Cruise ships – Owl City

I am stuck in L.A. through the week and can't get away  
And you're alone on the pier in West Palm Beach on your holiday  
Stormy nights, re-awake the stomach ache  
That I've acquired, from feeling down  
Things look grim and I'm so sick of being tired

Apartment lights go dark and it's depressing  
But what can I do?  
The midnight streets feel dead  
When I am so used to driving with you

Steve turned the cell phone over his hands a few times, contemplating whether or not to call. He had already checked in once that day, and she wasn't expecting to hear from him again until tomorrow, but as he sat alone in one of Tony's specious, but oh so empty guest bedrooms in his Malibu mansion overlooking the Pacific Ocean, all he really wanted was to talk to her.

_Screw it_, he said to himself hitting her number before he could talk himself out of it, waiting for her to pick up.

"Hello?" Darcy's sleepy voice answered on the 4th ring. "Is everything alright?" she asked immediately.

"Everything's fine," Steve answered quickly. "Did I wake you up?"

"Honey, you do realize it's three hours later in New York than it is in California," she replied tired amusement leaking into her tone.

Steve glanced down at his watch surprised to see it was already past midnight in LA, he had no idea it had gotten that late. "I'm sorry sweetheart, I'll let you go back to sleep."

"No, no," Darcy interjected, already sounding more alert. "I wasn't sleeping very well anyways. Why did you call?"

Steve hesitated before speaking. "I just miss you, and wanted to hear your voice," he admitted, now a little embarrassed that he had woken her up over it. Little did he know that his confession made Darcy smile so wide her cheeks ached.

"Then let me tell you all about what happened today when one of the new probationary agents took the last Boston crème that's always saved for Coulson."


	7. Dog Days are Over – Florencethe Machine

The dog days are over  
The dog days are done  
The horses are coming  
So you better run

Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father  
Run for your children, for your sisters and brothers  
Leave all your love and your longing behind  
You can't carry it with you if you want to survive

Steve had never stopped fighting from the moment he was born. Fighting poverty, fighting bullies, fighting his bad health, fighting Hydra, fighting Schmidt, fighting to find his place in the future, fighting Loki and the Chitauri. It seemed like no matter how far he came, there was always there was always something to fight for, fight against, or fight through.

It was no different when Darcy burst into his life one summer afternoon. He fought his attraction to her until she told him it was mutual. He fought to reconcile the morals he was raised with, with what he believed to her modern expectations to be, until she taught him that there was no prescribed time table their relationship. He fought the belief that good things in his life never last, by showing him unconditional love and patience. And when he fought his own insecurities by asking her to marry him, she absolved him by saying yes.

And when she said 'I do' in front of a small collection of their family and friends, Steve knew that at least for today the fight was over. And when the next thing invariably came up, because something always did, he would never be fighting alone again.


	8. Summer Skin – Death Cab for Cutie

I don't recall a single care  
Just greenery and humid air  
Then Labor Day came and went  
And we shed what was left of our summer skin

Despite his best efforts to adjust to living in the future, a task he largely succeeds in, there are times when the modern world gets to be too much and he begins to retreat into himself and his apartment. It was one of those times that Darcy mentioned she had a great aunt that owned a cabin upstate that they could run off to for a couple weeks just the two of them. Steve agreed without second thought.

The season was already technically over although it was still unseasonably warm (Darcy blamed climate change and Steve didn't ask her to elaborate, it didn't seem like something he wanted to worry about on their vacation) which meant the were kids back in school and they had their run of the lake and surrounding woods, their nearest neighbor a full six cabins down.

They had lazy mornings reading the newspaper and drinking coffee. Afternoon walks through the quaint little resort town where the townies didn't care who they were. And evenings spent catching fireflies like they were still children, before roasting marshmallows in the fire place for smores.

Even as he was rubbing aloe on her sunburn, a result of them taking the row boat out into the center of the lake and laying in the bottom of the boat while they talked for hours about everything and nothing, Darcy complaining the whole time that it wasn't fair that even though they both shared a naturally fair complexion, that any color he got healed the moment they stepped out of the sun, Steve decided this was the best three weeks of his life


	9. Rainbow Connection – Kermit the Frog

Why are there so many songs about rainbows  
and what's on the other side?  
Rainbows are visions, but only illusions,  
and rainbows have nothing to hide.  
So we've been told and some choose to believe it.  
I know they're wrong, wait and see.  
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection.  
The lovers, the dreamers and me.

Steve rolled over reaching for the warm body he had fallen asleep next to, frowning when he came up empty. Darcy's side of the bed was still warm so he knew she couldn't have gone too far. Throwing off the covers he tiptoed, using his super solider stealth, down to the bedroom at the end of the hallway. Peaking through the doorway he saw his suspicions were confirmed. Leaning against the jamb he remained silent, not wanting to interrupt the heartwarming tableau in front of him.

"Have you been half asleep and have you heard voices? I've heard them calling my name. Is this the sweet sound that called the young sailors. The voice might be one and the same. I've heard it too many times to ignore it. It's something that I'm supposed to be. Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection. The lovers, the dreamers and me."

And as he watched his wife rocking and singing to their six week old baby boy, he did what he thought impossible. He managed to fall even deeper and more hopelessly in love with her.


	10. Leaving on a Jet Plane – Bob Dylan

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go, I'm standing here outside your door,  
I hate to wake you up to say good-bye.  
But the dawn is breaking, it's early morn, the taxi's waiting. He's blowing his horn.  
Already I'm so lonesome I could die.  
So kiss me and smile for me, tell me that you'll wait for me, hold me like you'll never let me go.  
'Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again. Oh, babe, I hate to go.

She puts on a brave face every time he leaves on a mission, smiles, kisses him good bye, and slaps him on the butt. For good luck! She says with the mischievous smirk that he finds so endearing.

He never mentions that though she puts on a good show he can see right through the bravado, to the fear and worry in her eyes. Just as he never mentions when he comes home that he notices the dark circles from lack of sleep, or the fact that if he's gone for more than a few days that she loses a noticeable amount of weight.

And he worries too, not just about what she's going through while he's gone, but worries that one day it'll be too much for her. That even though he knows she loves him, that the constant stress and uncertainty will break her and she'll leave in an act of self-preservation.

He offered once to quit, to leave SHIELD and leave the Avengers, but she quickly shot him down. She told him that being Captain America was part of who he was and she could never ask him to do that for her. She was right too, for as much as he complained about the press and the bureaucracy sometimes, he loved that he was helping people, that he was making a difference. It gave him a sense of purpose, but he would still give it up for her in a heartbeat if she asked, but that's not the way Darcy worked, which was just one of the reasons he loves her.

She told him once that she knew what she was getting into when she agreed to their relationship. That's infinitely truer now, and he just hopes it's not a deal a deal breaker when he gets home and presents her with the ring currently hiding in the Risk box that was on the top shelf of the hall closet.


End file.
